Folk's t'internet sensations

IT'S the kind of chorus to cheer the hardening arteries of any true northerner: "I'm a working man from Lancashire and I want a chippy tea."

A hymn of rebellion against a cosmopolitan world of posh nosh, cous cous, raspberry coulis and Jamie Oliver, The Lancashire Hotpots' song Chippy Tea is rollicking good fun in the tradition of funny folk music. So far, so familiar.

IT'S the kind of chorus to cheer the hardening arteries of any true northerner: "I'm a working man from Lancashire and I want a chippy tea."

A hymn of rebellion against a cosmopolitan world of posh nosh, cous cous, raspberry coulis and Jamie Oliver, The Lancashire Hotpots' song Chippy Tea is rollicking good fun in the tradition of funny folk music. So far, so familiar.

But when the Lancashire lads start singing about eBay, Sat Nav and Dolby 5.1 - delivering a lament about a Trojan Horse virus sneaking past your firewall in a folkie style - it's obvious the Hotpots are delving into the kind of areas the Houghton Weavers left untouched.

"The Lancashire Hotpots like to say we are 21st century folk for 21st century folk," says Bernard Thresher, whose duties, say the Hotpots' MySpace page, include 'vocals, guitar and hard drive defragging'.

But best of all is He's Turned Emo, a Hokey Cokey-like singalong about a mate coming over all miserablist in his musical tastes and featuring the hookline: "He used to be a-listening to Simply Red, Now he's listening to Fall Out Boy instead."

The song has already been championed by Radio One DJ Colin Murray, has garnered over 120,000 plays on the band's MySpace site and is destined to be the Hotpots' first single. Best of all, it has proved that flat-cap wearing folkies can find the funny bones of the Lily Allen generation.

"At our gigs, you have the young kids of 16 and the student types at the front, giving it hell for leather, and then at the back you have the older generation who are there for Chippy Tea, and they just like the music," says Bernard.

That, incidentally, is not his real name, as becomes apparent when you learn that the rest of band comprises Dickie Ticker, Bob Wriggles and Willie Eckerslike. Bernard, aged 26, and his thirtysomething brothers in song are all from St Helens. While Bernard has latterly moved to Coventry to work in car factory, the three others are all lecturers in music technology in their home town.

"Dickie, myself and Bob were in an electronic group for four or five years, trying our hand at 18 different synths and warehouses and all sorts of stuff at four in the morning to people who don't even know their own name," says Bernard.

Human jukebox

"Willie, the drummer, is cabaret-tastic - a human jukebox. He can play anything.

"We had an idea to do a spoof rap group, but we got beaten to that by Goldie Lookin' Chain.

"All of sudden Dickie said: 'Let's do folk!'. He penned I Met A Girl On MySpace first and just before Christmas, we came down to my flat in Coventry and recorded it in the front room.

"It was April before we started gigging. We recorded the album and here we are."

The album is Never Mind The Hotpots - a play on the title and design of the Sex Pistols' most famous album - and the Hotpots are in the throes of negotiating a deal for distribution with a record company.

"We're using an old style of music but touching on new topics and I think that's why it's popular. People can relate to folk music again," says Bernard. "We've just taken every classic folk artist - your Houghton Weavers, your Oldham Tinkers, your George Formbys - and we have listened to them as much as we can to draw inspiration.

"But we have also listened to hip hop to see what they're banging on about, and poets like John Cooper Clarke. Then we've given it a modern twist."

But what do traditional, serious folkies make of the Hotpots' tongue-in-cheek variant?

"The reactions we have had so far are really nice. I just think they are happy that people are listening to folk music. We're not having a stab at it really, just using their genre."

Among their most titterworthy lines is: "Emotions? Tha's from Lancashire, tha's got none of those." Is there, I ask po-facedly, a danger of the Hotpots' reinforcing Lanky stereotypes?

"Is that a bad thing?" Bernard retorts. "If people have got a problem with a working man wanting a chippy tea, and not wanting his mate to go all emotional, then there's something a bit wrong."

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